UKH

While we may love to go on in the UK about our climbing ethics and how we like to keep our rock clean, bolt free, and adventurous, it seems many of our routes, particularly Scottish winter lines are laced with unnecessary tat, almost serving as bolts on crux sections or permanent anchors on belays. Clearly there are many nuances in UK climbing ethics, but is this just a compromise to ‘protect the rock’ from permanent bolts? Or is leaving tat to decay, then replacing it, resulting in more serious long lasting environmental consequences as well as contradicting our own ‘ethical’ standards?

I had not thought too much of this until spending some time climbing this winter with an international climber, where it became increasingly apparent that many of my proud ethical proclamations about UK trad culture appeared hollow as we ascended routes with tat spaced every few metres and ideally located, guidebook cited, quick to clip in, seemingly permanent belay sites.

As of 2023, crux sections on routes such as Point Five gully offer a range of tat choices to clip as the ice steepens, likewise the same can be said for numerous other winter classics, particularly in the Northern Corries, Glen Coe and other areas, where in situ threads abound. While many of the spots where tat offers protection may difficult or impossible to protect, the presence of the tat removes the chance to climb the route in the style as it would have been first climbed, or at least something close (-guidebook descriptions, beta etc.), limiting one’s experience. This is of course the argument that frequently levelled against bolting classic trad lines, or a difficult to protect crux, but somehow accumulating in situ tat seems to get a free pass.  

Alongside tat spread between pitches, tat anchors should also be questioned, most of the time they don’t appear to be necessary to protect a belay, and are often found in various states of potentially sketchy decay. How should these be compared to the bolted belays of the alps, or multi pitch sport routes? Is it any different that they are clipped to rusting old pegs? Or should aim to clip the rusty pegs ourselves and take our slings with us?

While unsightly, in situ tat doesn’t directly alter the nature of the rock in the way a bolt would, the continued cycle of replacement of decaying tat with new plastic cord or dyneema cannot be environmentally neutral, particularly when bits of old cord are abandoned, presumably resulting in long term microplastic pollution.

Regardless, it’s obvious that in many circumstances tat should be exempt from the knife. Abseil tat stations are important, particularly in saving people from long or dangerous walk offs, as often these tat stations don’t infringe on the climbs themselves, and therefore don’t detract from the experience of the climb. Alongside this, many may have to bail from a route for whatever reason, and need to leave tat, but shouldn’t this be removed by future parties to ensure it does not become a permanent feature of the route, or rather than an anticipated point to bail (Crypt Route)?

Is there an argument for, within reason, cutting back the tat left on UK/Winter routes?

Rather than sport climbing up a daisy chain of tat, my few Scottish days have been spent feverishly digging desperate to find even the most marginal of placements. There are no atheists in foxholes, and never has the thought occurred to me when winter climbing "man, this is just too safe it's really no fun at all". 

Shhh, I want to hear where these Scottish clip ups are! It sounds great. My abiding memory of point 5 is trying desperately to grind my ice screw into 3 inches of ice on rock, tying it off and questing on. 

Mind you anyone clipping random threads sticking out of lumps of turf ice and neve is a braver man than I.

I think it would be good to hear from the numerous mountain guides from the south who take their London clientele up to Scotland to climb these routes. What do they make of this minimalist piece of safety left to make their days out in Scotland a bit less stressful?

Tat is the inevitable (and contradictory) outcome of a minimalist traditional ethos applied to a climbing environment where it is more convenient to leave stuff than it is to remove it.

Funny thing is, provided it's in a usable state (which obviously often it isn't), we're grateful for it. In a blizzard with dark approaching, would I rather faff for ten minutes raking out seams and chipping icy placements to build a belay, or clip the shiny frozen-in cluster someone built earlier in the season? In a state of fearful pump, would I rather wobble in and tie off a cruddy screw or clip the stuck nut filling the only viable placement in the sidewall? Let me see...

Good old 'ethics', saving us from ourselves.

It would obviously be better if we left less in the first place.

While I haven't done any serious Scottish winter climbing for 25 years (and have only this winter started dabbling again in Cogne), I suspect that the tat is heavily concentrated on a few honeypot routes. Point Five, maybe Zero, the Message, and a couple of routes in Glencoe. Basically, the highest traffic medium / hard routes on the most popular and easiest to reach mountains.

Removing winter tat might not be so easy. The very  few times I have encountered any tat (many years ago) it was of dubious quality and poking out of the ice. You clipped it on the grounds that it was better than nothing, and moved on.

You can't remove tat poking out of ice in winter. You would need to wait until the summer. Most of the most popular winter lines are oozing choss fest's in summer.

If anyone fancies a summer ascent of Point Five to chop tat, please don't let me stop you.

When you add the spectacle of coire an t-sneachda sometimes resembling a leisure centre rather than a mountain coire- with all the human traffic and commercial angles going on there at any one time, I think a bit of tat on a route isn't the biggest problem if maintaining the wildness and purity of the hills and crags is your objective.

To be clear I have no issues with anyone from anywhere getting out and respectfully enjoying the hills and climbs of Scotland. 

Have a great rest of the winter everyone!

Mountain corrie is, IMO, somewhat a grandiose term fro something that is 30-45 mins walk from a large car park, it far from a wilderness area (which is an argument which holds for large swathes of the UK uplands really). Especially given the crux of your point - the impact on the area is substantially larger than some old tat, so does it really matter if we have this kind of stuff around? For me personally, if we accept its okay to leave the odd bit of material that is essential for our climbing, why use crappy old bits of cord when we could just put in a bolt... Thin end of the wedge this line of argument perhaps, but something to think about as a minimum.

(Note I'm not onboard with the logical conclusion of "bolt everything", but I can't really justify why on this line)

I remember being disappointed at the amount of fixed slings on Bloody Sunday (E4 6a) when I did it. 

I couldn't understand the mindset for placing them - they seemed totally unnecessary as they would have been easily placed on lead, but changed the feel of the top half of the climb to something more akin to sport climbing.

Perhaps the ethos should be that any tat should be removed by the second, just like any other piece of protection.

I sorta agree, tat can be excessive on some routes and definitely reduces the challenge for those routes. At the same time though I love coming across a peg from the FA and feeling a connection to the history of a route or coming across an stuck piece in a strenuous position and imagining the story behind how that piece got there like who placed it, what sort of epic were they having etc. I'm definitely keen for keeping the hills clean but I'm yet to see a route that's truly excessively laced with fixed gear and in some cases leaving gear is less damaging than every team smashing the same peg in and out. Also the grade of a route needs to be considered before removing gear, for example if rockfall has hugely altered the grade a fixed piece might be used for aid and should be left if removing it would boost the grade past the original grade given. For me at least this is guidelines:

- Any gear that appears to be from the era of the FA is to be left in-situ

- If a piece if vital to aid an un-climbable section it is to be left in-situ

- An attempt should be made to remove any gear between belays that does not fall under the above criteria

- In-situ belays should be left in-situ, you've already climbed the pitch and earned the grade, no one is earning grades based on their ability to build a belay. It's also import to keep these as points of retreat and especially on busy routes it it just makes sense to leave them.

- Where a belay/retreat point has many slings/tat an attempt should be made to remove old/redundant tat and tidy it up by replacing with a single newer sling/cord

Obviously there's exceptions to all the above but for me these are the general guidelines I work by. Generally though just leave the route in the state it's been found, don't add to the tat but also don't remove what's there as there's probably a good reason it's there (unless it's a piece that's obviously got stuck and couldn't be removed)

Why have an ongoing cycle of slings/cord and other crap though? Would be easier to use something permanent, like say… a bolt.

I think that conclusion seems pretty fair. In an ideal I would personally rather not encounter any fixed gear on a route and belays (that's not to say I love clipping tat when scared!).

The question as to why a permeant tat belay shouldn't be bolted is an interesting one though.

I think the removable and low impact nature of tat fits the UK ethics a lot better than drilling a permanent hole for a bolt and achieves the same thing of a in-situ belay. Given the choice to either have to occasionally sacrifice a sling or encounter bolts I choose leaving the occasional sling. There's something nice too about the community aspect of maintaining belay tat

Totally with you dude, ideally no tat on routes and where there is reduced as much as possible but I think there's fair exceptions like the ones I listed. Haha think we've all been super grateful for a fixed piece at some point

Removable yes, but I disagree with you that tat is low impact. A mouldy pile of old rope is often far more visible than a discrete bolt, and is often impossible to clean up in its entirety (i.e. there's always microplastic pollution from frayed slings etc). I'd personally to prefer all forms of fixed year, but appreciate there are places where it is required, and I think a well placed bolt has the least visual and environmental effect. "Drilling a hole" isn't really an issue for me personally - weathering is drilling holes all the time.

It'd be easy enough to do, just start at the top and abseil down from the tat, removing it as you go...

Oh

I agree. I was a little saddened on my last ascent of Poor Man's Peuterey (S 4a) to find that the peg on the nose was no longer there. It was an old friend which I'd known since I first climbed it nearly 50 years ago, when it had already clearly already been there for some time.

I agree. Often this would be less intrusive than a bunch of tat or a chain. I don't understand objections where this doesn't affect the actual climbing (and if you could clip tat for protection why is this better than clipping a bolt?) or how accepting bolts on an ab point would somehow justify bolting climbs on the crag. However experience shows that whenever bolts are installed they will usually be quickly chopped. As samwalla said, tat seems to be more compatible with UK ethics, even if logic would suggest something permanent might be preferable.

Tat is self limiting as you can only place it in certain locations (i.e. you need something to thread or sling).  A bolt can go (almost) anywhere.  If you replace insitu tat with a bolt then it opens us up to placing a bolt where there wouldn't have been tat, just for convenience.  Personally, I don't mind the odd bit of tat, I don't feel like we are overrun with the stuff.

My recent climbing partner, also from overseas, was equally surprised at the amount of tat on Scottish winter routes. Particularly given many of the popular routes have plentiful pegs, some of which appear to have been replaced in recent years to perpetuate them. 

I would generally deem tat acceptable if: (1) there is a commonly accepted approach of abseiling from a particular point on the route (e.g. top of first pitch of Thompson's on the Ben); (2) it is needed to aid a section and this is commonly accepted as necessary and reasonable; or (3) it is from the FA / historic ascents and has become commonly accepted as part of the route / its grade or is otherwise stuck gear which would be damaging to remove. I can also see related arguments for replacing pegs that have existed for a long time on trade routes. 

Part of the problem I think is the increasing busyness of certain routes, which force people to seek alternative belays and anchor points. Also the fact that, in line with what has been said, unless the route has been done before, many people seeing in-situ tat / belay (which may have been inappropriately installed) will assume there is a good reason for it and would probably not remove, unless it was obviously degraded in which case they are likely to replace it. Once tat is added by a team for some reason, it therefore can often get perpetuated for that season. 

Other than the above, I would personally prefer not to see tat or fixed belays on Scottish winter routes. Where it is acceptable, I would prefer cord and not bolts (even though I see the logic for, if acceptable, why not install the most safe option). A mound of garish and decaying cord is often an eyesore and not particularly environmentally friendly, but I agree is more compatible with the historic practice of Scottish winter ethics and the approach I sense most people want to see. 

Of course it would be easier. Which is just one reason why it would be unacceptable.

If it's not about it making life easier, why don't we just get rid of any unnecessary slings and cord all together, including the belays?

People can set up their own and leave the mountain clean.

The person I replied to said it was. As for clearing it all off winter routes, far easier said than done.

In an ideal world, yes.

I don't think it is common to abseil off after the chimney on Thompson's Route (IV 4)

It's certainly not doing the route to abseil off part way up. This also applies to many other Scottish winter routes, for example:

Boomer's Requiem (V 5) Abseiling after the crux icefall is not doing the route - no tick.

North Buttress - West Route (Winter) (IV 4) Abseiling off after the chimney = no tick

Deep-Cut Chimney (Winter) (IV 4) Again, abseiling after the first 2 pitches = not doing the route.

Also, people abseiling habitually from part way up the route is contributing to the mouldy piles of tat all over the shop in certain popular Scottish venues

I just want to know if I'll end with an angry mob after me if I start slashing tat on routes!

People do - there is often tat in place there for that purpose. I think it is obvious that would not count as "doing" the route. When it is there, I personally don't find it unacceptable. I take this as an exception, however - tat should be minimised, as per my comment. I have seen more belay tat then abseil tat, though. 

Rather than worry about a little tat on trade routes, you should open your eyes to all the possibilities of  lesser travelled climbs, rather than follow the party in front on the freshly hoovered  cairngorm classic bristling with insitu gear or the hooked out stepped  Nevis gully, be a little more adventurous, you will not find an over abundance of insitu gear on these!

Is it ok if I leave a load of tat on the crux's of those more wild routes if I reckon they're a bit tricky?

I'm not sure that a lot of in-situ tat is a black mark against UK ethics per se. The point is, it's a self regulated system (or at least it should be) - someone thinks the tat needs replaced, they do so; someone thinks there's too much of it and it should be removed, they do so. What gets me is folk that complain about the amount of old tat on routes / ab points, but that don't actually remove/replace it. It's surely not that difficult if you've a knife to hand.

Then we just make ourselves an ethical code (like the one we have now) that we just replace tat with bolts rather than add them willy nilly.

My ability to place or not place a sling round a massive spike at a belay has not and presumably will never not be the limiting factor for me when winter climbing. 

Do we really need these belays to have tat or bolts? We did away with pegs years ago, isn't it time to just clean it all up?

No, but not all belays are massive spikes. 

Start now then. An online discussion isn't going to clean up the crags.

 I am *NOT* advocating drilling holes (for bolts or anything) unless scenario requires and local ethic permits. Even then I err to not drilling.

In these discussions drilling a hole for a thread hardly ever gets discussed. There are cases when a drilled hole allows something (tatt) to be threaded where not otherwise tatt-practical, or for tatt to be much more minimal.

Again I am *not* advocating people going round drilling away, just saying that it's not a case of just:  tatt versus bolt, there are other options too (stakes, threads, etc, etc). Just for completeness....

In reply to Michael Gordon:

A fine sentiment!

There are two separate arguments going on here which merge somewhat. 1: should we have fixed gear at all, and 2) if we have fixed gear, what form should I be?

I'm of the opinion that the fixed gear is there for a good reason generally, a lot of which is covered on this thread. If we work on the premise that fixed gear is fine, IMO our goals should be to me it as unobtrusive, long lasting, and functional as possible - hence my support for bolts, which tick all three points, unlike with slings etc.

I think the current way of doing things works well and is less open to interpretation.

I think that summarises the arguments well.

I guess the main debate here is what should remain as fixed gear, I would personally rather fixed gear only existed for essential abseil points, and maybe here there is a good case for bolts. I would find it harder to be convinced that UK trad routes need fixed gear on the belays, as the lack of this gear is what makes our climbing stay adventurous.

The current way of doing things is effectively a tat free for all.

I will, hoping to encourage others to follow suit

Despite there being calls in climbing media and 'how to' books for people to remove old tat since at least the 80's when I started climbing, it would appear that tat use is never going to go away and the argument that it can be removed and the mountain 'returned to nature' simply doesn't hold true.  Therefore surely it would be better to replace tat piles at belays with decent, unobtrusive fixed gear? It need not be bolts and chains, it could be mega slings and rap rings as is common in the USA.  We need to look to other nations to see what the outcome of installing proper fixed gear belays is - have they become 'the thin end of the wedge'? Indeed, have belays in the UK like this (steel cables round trees etc.) become the thin end of the wedge?

As for fixed gear 'en route', would it be better to take up a cordless grinder and cut bomber nut slots instead of putting pegs / tat threads in? No visual scarring of the rock from rust stains, no worries about reliability of placement for climbers.

Although this doesn't cover every situation it covers some... Should we learn from our American cousins and use the macramé knot more often as it can cover some scenarios where trying to pull the rope all the way round a feature to retrieve it is going to get stuck

youtube.com/watch?v=wGEyhvziZx0&

Or.. will we just seen an increase in MRT attendance for incorrectly used macarame knots? I'm "uncomfortable" about them myself. I've never used one in anger, would rather use tatt, but maybe I should've used it?

Yeah this looks cool, but a little sketchy!

Pretty down with leaving tat for abs, just needs to be cleared up later.

Bolt/fixed gear at abseil points and belays on popular routes is a better option. Less messy, safer and generates less plastic waste. Doesn’t have to be everywhere or on every route. 
 

everyone on here gets worked up about plastic waste but then they are happy to leave old slings and bits of rope all over the mountain as tat. 
 

On busy routes, a bolt anchor would increase efficiency and reduce wear. As climbing gets more popular the ethics need to modernise. Claiming to “leave the mountain as it is” is nonsense anyway, as we have engineered paths, huts/bothies, we use crampons and axes which cause scratches, we put metal gear in cracks and polish the rock with rubber shoes, we “clean” routes so we can climb them, it’s all a bit hypocritical really 

As I haven't climbed in Scotland, winter or summer, since I moved to Franceover 20years ago this debate doesn't really concern me. I don't really remember lots of tat or in situe gear on winter routes - has it really got worse? And would bolts really work on winter routes ? I would expect them to be hidden by snow or ice much of the time.

I’m not super interested here in the “leave the mountain as it is” argument from an environmental perspective, we’re probably 5- 10, 000 years past that point now. I just think fixed gear and excessive tat fundamentally changes the climbing experience, and takes away from the uniqueness of a “clean” climbing ethic